


Tralfamadorian

by Zeke21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abstract, But not today, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dean Winchester-centric, Episode: s03e11 Mystery Spot, Episode: s05e21 Two Minutes to Midnight, Episode: s08e17 Goodbye Stranger - The Crypt Scene, Experimental Style, Fate, Gen, Hell, Hurt Dean Winchester, Non-Chronological, Non-Linear Narrative, Purgatory, Slaughterhouse-Five, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Torture, Unreliable Narrator, conceptual, mostly an exercise in prose tbh, one day i will write a fic abt someone else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 01:52:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16777258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeke21/pseuds/Zeke21
Summary: “How old are you?” he asks Death.“As old as God. Or older. It’s not something you’ll be able to conceive,” Death shrugs. He looks at Dean with the pity of a parent. He looks at Dean with the kindness of a giant. “How old are you?”“Thirty-one,” Dean says, hounds tearing at his skin.“One,” Dean says, dragging himself from the earth.“Seventy-one,” Dean says, drenched in blood.Death regards him, mildly interested. Or amused. Or Sad. “Now you know.”





	Tralfamadorian

He hangs suspended from a million golden threads, gossamer thin and spider strong. They grow into and out of his skin, stretching into nothing. No walls, no floors, just black flecked with gold. He watches them all with eyes half closed. 

In the thread from his big toe, he and death sit in a diner in Chicago, surrounded by corpses, eating pizza with a fork.

“How old are you?” he asks Death.

“As old as God. Or older. It’s not something you’ll be able to conceive,” Death shrugs. He looks at Dean with the pity of a parent. He looks at Dean with the kindness of a giant. “How old are _you_?”

“Thirty-one,” Dean says, hounds tearing at his skin.

“One,” Dean says, dragging himself from the earth.

“Seventy-one,” Dean says, drenched in blood.

Death regards him, mildly interested. Or amused. Or Sad. “Now you know.”

*

“Forty years we’ll have together. Longer than the angel that’s going to rip you from me. Longer than you’ve known dear old Sammy. Longer than you’ll ever know your poor Mommy and Daddy. I’m the only one that knows you truly and I’m the only one that never left you; that will never leave you. You should remember that”

If Dean still had a mouth (instead of a ragged gash held together with gold string) maybe he would ask who the angel is. Or maybe he would just scream instead. Alastair knows of course. Strokes his face.

“All in good time, pet.”

*

“I’m an angel of the Lord,” the creature tells him, tying a noose of gold around his neck. Now Dean already knew.

*

In one looping thread it’s Tuesday and he gets crushed by a piano. In another Sam kills him with an axe. Next Tuesday it’s the tacos, then he slips in the shower. It’s the little deaths the soul remembers (even as the mind and body forget). It’s tired of Tuesday, but it repeats its lines faithfully. Always a good sport.

“What do you remember?”

All of it. None of it. Pain and peace. Gold loops.

“Not much.” Is all he can say. Tuesday is Sam’s to suffer and he lets it fade.

Some Tuesdays, the body twitches (muscle memory) and the soul recoils.

*

Time is time and space is space: when Angels (or Demons) will it, they exist quite separately. 

*

In hell, when it was expedient, he aged.

He watched (from the golden thread embedded in his eye) his hands wrinkle and his hair go from brown to grey to white. He watched age spots bloom, felt his teeth yellow as mist spread across his vision. He felt his joints stiffen and curl inwards: his scars bunching the skin around them, leaving him lopsided. Alastair would guide his decrepit corpse to a pool of silver mercury; allowing him to gaze on a face he’ll never live to meet otherwise - before he forced it under.

*

_After_

Wizened fingers curl round a blade, remain frozen in place even in those rare moments his hands are empty. Alastair slides it in and out lovingly, guiding his hands (gold spinning from his knuckle) for he can barely see. Blood (not his own) flows, turning wrinkles into rivers, leaving black nothingness in their wake. Corroding him like acid. He’s coming apart and he laughs.

*

_After After_

Black cakes his hands, the afterbirth of his own grave. Once clean they are an unfamiliar memory: fuzzy at the edges. His face too is an anachronism, forty years out of time. He reaches a hand to the mirror, expecting it to fall through. His fingers hit silvered glass and he snatches them back. The thin gold line stretches from the handprint on his shoulder.

*

Sam thinks they’re nightmares. Or memories. He thinks they’re of the past. Dean lets him. 

“Time’s different down there,” he tells him. He’s lying. Time’s time, it’s him that’s different. Billy Pilgrim’s twin. Forty years down here is forty years up there. (Golden Years.) 

He’s still there. He’s still here.

He’s not remembering, he’s happening. He’s not dreaming, he’s doing.

*

The first/last thing Alastair does is show him. Chronologically it happens in the middle. It takes a long time for Alastair to carve the path: the door is his tongue, the stairs are his bones, his soul the lights that guide the way. But it’s the start of the end, the end of the start. It’s also where ends end.

“We’re here.”

Dean unravels. The gold unfurls, wave after wave. He’s here and he’s not. He watches himself. He watches himself. He watches himself watch himself. Alastair watches him watch himself. He watches Alastair watch him watch himself. And so it goes.

“The future is now and then,” Alastair plucks a few strings like he would a harp, and Dean remembers his reality quivering. He would whimper if he could, but only gold pours from his mouth. “So many possibilities to prepare for: but only one actuality. I have my preference of course but,” Alastair delicately cuts a few strands loose and examines them, winds them round his bony fingers, puts them in his pocket. “I want to leave you with a few parting gifts: just in case I end up burned and bloody. Don’t worry,” he adds, “they’ve already grown back.”

He points to a golden knot of loops around Dean’s heart: both ends embedded in his chest. “Now _these_ ones are quite interesting – and rare. These are the ones where the not quite yous – the fractions of you created for some purpose or other – die.” He prods one gently and Cas stabs Dean through the heart, eyes dead. Alastair smiles. “So many still to come. What fine pieces craftsmanship: I think I’ll leave them as they are. You know where to find them”

*

Some town in the middle of nowhere. (G)old book at the bottom of the bargain bin. _Take it, kid,_ he tells himself. _You’ll need it._

So it goes.

*

“I’m sorry Brother,” the Cajun voice whispers as fangs sink into his neck: a parody of a kiss, leaving fire in place of the blood they’re sucking out. 

“You ain’t my brother,” Dean grunts, tugging at the chains.

“One day, Deano,” Alastair purrs from his other side. “Don’t you fret.”

Dean opens his eyes and Benny pulls him to his feet, purgatory seeping back into his senses. “Hey now brother, don’t go dyin’ on me yet.” The gold thread stretches through his neck and into Dean’s chest.

“Knew I knew that voice,” Dean says.

*

“Oh come on Dean,” a red-headed demon hisses in his ear, hands deep in his stomach, “Don’t you remember me yet? I’m the little sister –”

“– I never wanted,” Dean finishes for her, watching Charlie disappear onto the bus.

“You’re going to cause me so much pain,” Charlie squeezes something inside him. “Time to – ”

“ – repay the favour,” Dean gloats: now is her turn on the rack. He snaps her arm and she screams, collapsing on the grass. Alastair’s timing, as always, is perfect.

“I forgive you,” she tells him after, hair flecked with gold.

“Which time?”

*

The soul remembers in a gradual awakening. Never the first or even second sight. It takes a word, a shrug, a flash of gold. The faces emerge from memory, the pain shifts: grows barbs. Throwaway lines take on new dimensions. The body flinches. The mind weeps. The soul(s) sigh in parallel release.

*

Naomi forces Cas’ hand forward to plunge his blade through Dean’s throat.

Dean wakes up.

Cas cries as he snaps Dean’s neck

Dean wakes up.

Cas snarls and stabs Dean in the stomach. It’s a slow death and Cas strokes his hair, whispering apologies.

Dean wakes up.

Cas laughs as he beats Dean to death.

Dean wakes up.

Cas refuses to look away as he chokes him out.

Dean wakes up.

Cas stabs him in the back, body shaking, and Dean dies to the site of Naomi’s smug face.

Dean wakes up.

Cas blinks in confusion as blood pours from Dean’s mouth.

Cas tilts his head.

Dean wakes up.

Cas –

Dean wakes up.

Dean wakes up.

Dean wakes up.

Dean wakes up.

Dean wakes up.

Dean wakes up.

Cas snaps his arm, crushes his cheekbone, raises the blade.

Dean wakes – oh wait.

The gold threads loop around, knotting into his heart, bringing him back to himself.

It’s a wonder he has any time for living. So much dying to catch up on.

*

He hangs suspended from a million golden threads, gossamer thin and spider strong. They grow into and out of his skin, stretching into nothing. No walls, no floors, just black flecked with gold. He watches them all with eyes half closed. 

In the thread from his other big toe Death says “Poo-tee-weet?”

**Author's Note:**

> this work is inspired a lot by 'story of your life' by Ted Chiang (the story that arrival is based on) as well as by Vonnegut so I recommend that story if u liked this/wanna have your perception of time and free will fucked up. It's quite fun.


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